GIG PRANKS THAT WENT HORRIBLY WRONG.

[Kandinskyesque]

In my early 20s I was in an original material band, doing quite well (Vocals/Rhythm Guitar).
We had a young guy looking for an "in" on the band scene helping us out as our drum tech. It worked out well for him he ended up with a good career as a drummer with a major band.
He was a bit of a "headbanger" (idiot) like myself and we were constantly pulling pranks, especially where alcohol was involved.

Anyways we were headlining a decent gig and they'd given us a dressing room, which had a tampon machine on the wall. Being reckless and of low moral fibre, the drum tech and I pulled it off the wall, bought beer with the financial contents and were larking around with the feminine hygiene contents.

I've no recall as too who's idea it was but it felt like a good one at the time...
We thought it would be "a good laugh" if we taped the tampons to the underside of the drummer's cymbals of which he had several on his drum rack (it was the late 80s). This meant that during the opening song which was cymbal crash heavy (again 80s), the tampons would swing down like little white cotton wool Tarzans.

We went on stage started our opening tune and by the 3rd bar the drums had completely dropped out, as well as an out of time clatter.
It turned round to see the drummers legs in the air from behind his rack as he'd toppled backwards on his stool having not anticipated these 'objects' swinging down on his cymbals. There was even one where the string had managed to wrap itself around one of his sticks.

It wasn't a great start. However, 30+ years later when we met up last summer when the drummer was over visiting from Oz, recalling the incident managed to get the drummer in tears of laughter (our original intention).
A long wait for the intended reaction.

 

[MisterZ]

Not a gig, and not a prank, but...

I was a freshman at conservatory. We had just gotten a slew of new Yamaha grand pianos in the piano majors' practice rooms. One Sunday afternoon in late January or early February, a day when most of the US is watching the championship game of one of our four major sports leagues, several of us got into one of those practice rooms and prepared one of those brand spankin' new pianos for a pirate recording project we were working on. I think we fully removed the preparations when we were done...I know we left a few scratch marks on the wound bass strings where we scraped them with our keys.

This was the same bunch of miscreants who performed the Velvet Underground's "The Gift" for a convocation of the entire student and faculty body the next year. How we didn't get expelled en masse is a complete mystery to me.

 

[Blue]

I've no recall as too who's idea it was but it felt like a good one at the time...

I've no recall as TO WHOSE idea it was but it felt like a good one at the time...

 

[Kandinskyesque]

I've no recall as TO WHOSE idea it was but it felt like a good one at the time...

Thanking thee.
We're still trying to get to grips with English on this side of Emperor Hadrian's wall.

 

[Blue]

Thanking thee.
We're still trying to get to grips with English on this side of Emperor Hadrian's wall.

 

[Preacher]

We had a guitarist that had an old tube amp (this was back in my big hair days) that was always on the fritz. Now that I know better as it was a very nice tube amp (mesa boogie woody) but it was always having problems mostly due to us not knowing that you need to make sure the tubes are all the way into their sockets or you have issues after you bang it around.

So anyway we have this spot we are playing and he is the lead guitarist on most of the songs. The drummer and I (playing bass) decide to have a little fun with him about him upgrading (BIG LOL) his old tube amp (it was pretty beat up) with a new Solid State Peavey Stereo Chorus because of reliability.

So we set up and have extension cords running to all the amps on stage in front of the drummer. Our drummer discovers that if he leans his stool all the way to the right the guitar amp loses power. Apparently the carpet that covered all the cords had one cord that was directly under his stool leg and if he leaned all his weight on it the power cut off.

So during the solos he would lean over and cut off the power, at one point he had a Tom Morello thing going where the amp was kicking on and off rapidly. It was frustrating our guitarist to the point he tore that amp apart when we had a break to make sure it was all plugged in right.

It was probably a month later the guitarist showed up with a brand new Marshal half stack as he traded off the Mesa.